Edited: 30.01.2019

Prologue

Chapter Song: Dead Battery - Stay (feat. Lea Santee)

Death. A simple, but much feared, concept.

Maybe because it's the only thing we know will inevitably happen. From the moment we're born, it's the only thing we are truly promised. Whether it be just after our first breath, or after years of countless intakes, we all know we will one day take our last, and our lungs will be filled no more.

And that—the fact that our own demise is the only definite factor of our life—is undeniably, utterly, terrifying.

I was always one of those who claimed not be scared of dying. not quite of death itself, but dying at least. I knew myself it was all an act, and I really was fearful of losing my life, but I knew it would happen at some point. I was quite a realist in that aspect. I knew I would die, so I tried to accept that. Tried being the key word. I was never quite successful with my attempt, but I wasn't aware of that until faced with death.

I wasn't prepared to die so young. I had imagined myself living a full life. I had imagined myself dying at an old age, having lived a full life with all the typical things. Love. Marriage. Children. But I died with none of that. Merely a few months from turning fifteen, I died, stripped of the entire life ahead of me. Or, of whatever life I thought I had ahead of me.

How I died isn't necessarily important. It was a car crash—a simple, quick death. My death was the result of a drunk driver and a tortuous road on a night where two cars were seemingly fated to collide. Well, if you believed in that kind of stuff.

I doubt my mother survived. All I remember is the two seconds of fear before we made impact, and then there was nothing. My life, gone. As though it were absolutely nothing to begin with. It disappeared from existance, and would disappear from the world's memory, eventually.

I honestly do not know what deity had heard my last plea, but I guess my yearning for my stolen future didn't go unheard.

I don't know what my fate was, or what it is. I don't know whether or not I was meant to die on that night, or whether I was meant to remember anything from my previous life. But I did know one thing. About one thing, I was certain.

I was given a second chance.

I no longer was a teenage girl from England, who had been filled with hope and optimism, and tried to live ignorant to the cruel realities of her own world. No, that girl was well and truly dead.

But, on the day she died, I, Byakuren Yuki, was born.

…Or should I say reborn?

Walking in my sleep
Like the naked trees...

© Masashi Kishimoto